Technology | Media | Telecommunications

Monday, April 01, 2013

Automotive Telematics and In-Vehicle Infotainment

The two main silos in the telematics industry -- consumer automotive and commercial telematics -- remain the most active areas within the broader M2M (machine to machine) mobile communications industry.

Advancements in entertainment head-units and higher smartphone penetration will result in software App capability reaching a fifth of all consumer vehicles in the developed markets of North America and Western Europe by 2017.

According to the findings from the latest market study by Juniper Research, the success of new standards -- such as MirrorLink -- will be instrumental in creating the foundations for the connected car ecosystem to flourish.

Though Juniper Research also forecasts robust growth in more traditional embedded consumer telematics services, the success of smartphone tethering and in-vehicle Apps is expected to exert downward pressure on the price of vehicle manufacturers’ own embedded telematics infotainment services.

The Juniper study notes that Big Data derived from telematics service provision is also likely to emerge as an unexpected revenue driver for telematics companies and automotive manufacturers.

"Sky-high smartphone ownership and a standardized approach to integrating apps into the vehicle head-unit mean that the barriers to making the connected car a reality have all but gone," said Anthony Cox, associate analyst at Juniper Research.

The study found that the only factor holding back even faster deployment of in-vehicle Internet will be slow growth in the new vehicle market itself in developed economies.

Further findings from the market study include:

Consolidation within the commercial fleet telematics space has yet to run its course, though ultimately global fleet telematics players are likely to emerge from today’s front-runners.

Trials of V2V (vehicle to vehicle) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) are on-going in some markets, although wide-spread deployment remains a long way off.

Insurance telematics is reaching the point of wide-scale deployment particularly in certain markets such as the US, Italy and the UK.